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22 Comments

General CommentHow can there only be 16 comments on a song so beautiful, so powerful, so true??

The song was inspired by the death of an innocent man who was mistaken for an enemy and killed when all he actually wanted was to help. I don't know what is worse: killing someone accidentally/by mistake or killing someone because you want to...

To me, the song points out that either way, all forms of violence, are brutal, tragic and most of all useless (nothing comes from them)!
And if not you object to violence in general, perhaps you need the death of an innocent to awake you and make you re-think the methods and use of war or violence. I think that's what Sting means with "Perhaps this final act was meant to clinch a lifetime's argument..."

General Comment[Sting]: Fragile (1988) I was reading about a young American in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua who was shot by the Contras. I felt very sad. This guy had gone to Nicaragua to try to help, and ended up being mistaken, deliberately or otherwise, for a Marxist guerrilla. I think there was a lot of that kind of mistake being made. This idea of fragility was a very important one for me. It's very easy to kill people. It's almost a casual thing. The song's taken on many meanings since then, though. People think its an ecological song, because of my other interests. I suppose they think of the fragile eco-system and think, Sting must be singing about that. But I suppose it's the mark of a good song that it can have many different shades of meaning, so I'm not arguing. I've never written a tree-hugging song in all my years of tree-hugging.

General Commentthis is one of the most beuttiful songs ive ever heard.
tells us how valuable our lives are, but we dont relize it until they're lost ... at least thats what i think of when i listen to it. the 'true' message/s (not the one that i have in mind) would have to be: how meaningless violence is, how valuable our lives are etc.

"Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence
and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are"

Everything else seems pretty plain, though. The imagery of "Blood will flow when flesh and steel are one, Drying in the color of the evening sun...Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away, but something in our minds will always stay" is just BRILLIANT.

my guess is that the way to understand this second part is realizing that violence creates something... there is an outcome in that people get hurt.. because people are fragile... the final act then would be denying this outcome... that the rain had washed away this fact.. the rain from a star... the only way to do that would be to lie about it.. a lying star.. right.. a star... in this sense an important person with star like qualities washed it away.. a politician perhaps... only sting knows what he meant.. so .. its just a guess

General CommentThis song is about war and the state of the world/violence in general, and it's affects:

"If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one" =bullets, weapons

"Tommorrow's rain will wash the stains away, but something in our minds will always stay"=War/violence has a lasting effect, long after the actual physical effects are gone and the dead are buried

"Perhaps this final act was meant....yada yada....for all those born beneath an angry star, lest we forget how fragile we are"=Some act of violence/war over some issue..land, religion, politics, etc..but it proves again that violence solves nothing. The "For all those born beneath an angry star" those are people, I would imagine, who live in a state of war or violence..."lest we forget how fragile we are" means that war/violence affects everyone in an infinite number of ways, we/life is so fragile..etc.

The end of the song plays off the first verse speaking about the rain, on and on the rain falls from above, washing away the "stains" of war/violence but also serves as a reminder of what it is there to "wash away".

General Comment"Beneath an angry star"... I think it means people fated, doomed, to suffer. Like how Shakespeare opens Romeo and Juliet with the bit about "Star-crossed lovers"--people used to read your fortunes in the stars... It's not necessarily a prophecy, but an inevitability. It's a very sad song...a warning, almost.